prediscovery

But if the term means anything, surely the prediscovery of the Higgs has already happened?

This is the rather bemusing notion that theorists are engaged in "prediscovery."

"The distinction with prediscovery is that theorists discover the existence of something observers have never seen.

He writes, for instance, of the fabled Higgs boson, needed to set the seal on the standard model of forces and particles, as a "potential prediscovery" that most physicists hope will happen.

So if a physicist suggests that some system of equations indicates the possible existence of a new particle, a particular manifestation of a force or an unsuspected quirk of space-time, and his suspicion turns out to be well founded, he makes a prediscovery.